Gwen grabbed him. “That’s enough.”
“No, no,” Claire said. “Let’s X them out. She put a green X over one; Tim drew a yellow one over another. “That’s a good boy.”
He remained silent, then drew a fish in a bowl that Claire suspected was Mr. Grumbles.
“See,” Claire said into the phone. “Come back from the dead.”
When everything was packed, Gwen made a last attempt. “It’s not too late, you know. To leave. Not too late at all.”
“I need to stay here.”
Gwen pulled away. “I’ll call your doctor directly. Please stay safe, okay?”
“Where else could I stay?”
Gwen grimaced at her mother’s poor joke.
* * *
That night Lucy baked a rigatoni casserole. Claire felt disloyal admitting it, but without Gwen, the atmosphere was more relaxed. It didn’t even bother her that Lucy drank glass after glass of wine. They acted like schoolgirls playing hooky.
“Did I tell you about this artist at the gallery? His name is Javier.”
Claire was happy. On schedule, she drank an elixir before dinner. By eleven she broke out in a sweat, fearing indigestion. At midnight her head was hanging over the toilet. Lucy called the doctor on duty, then brought her a cup of Minna’s tea.
“The pasta probably wasn’t the best idea. Too spicy.”
Claire nodded, hopeful that it could be something so simple.
“The doctor thinks maybe you’re having hot flashes.”
“Of course.” The banality of the explanation made her angry. In her new dramatic circumstances, headache connoted brain tumor.
“Try to sleep,” Lucy said. “Is it okay if I go into my old room to get some boxes from the closet? Her door is always closed.”
“Don’t touch anything. She bites Paz’s head off when things are moved.”
Lucy turned to go away. “I’m going to get a nightcap.”
“Would you sit with me awhile?”
“Be right back.” A few minutes later Lucy sat at the foot of the bed with a shot of tequila. “I never agreed with Gweny, by the way. I would be the same as you — stay where I drew strength and comfort. I’d do a lot of things before I’d agree to live under her roof.”
“She doesn’t like Minna.”
Lucy sipped. “Sometimes people look a lot worse than they are. People do things to survive. Doesn’t necessarily make them bad. Gweny doesn’t accept weakness.”
“How did I get such a brilliant daughter?”
“In the genes, I guess.”
“She doesn’t understand I’m trying to fix things.”
But Lucy didn’t hear her, lost in her own thoughts. “Gweny never got over being frightened that night. She told me they touched her hair. And she wanted to cut it off. Dad wouldn’t let her. He said it would upset you too much. So she just held it all in. I told her you did the best you could for us.”
“I wanted you to have a sense of belonging.” Her parents had been permanent wanderers, making her feel an outsider. She wanted her children to feel the ranch in their blood, to have a bond so deep that it carried them through life and made them strong. “Was that so wrong?”
They sat in silence, the lamp casting a small circle of light around the bed, making the corners of the room dark, the night outside the open windows darker still.
“I saw him, you know.” The words came out before Claire could consider the effect.
“Who?”
“Joshua.”
Lucy nodded, her eyes getting larger, the pupils darkening. It crossed Claire’s mind she might be taking drugs again. “Sometimes I think I’ve seen him. I imagine it was all a mix-up, and he’s living in another state — like Utah — and has no idea how he got separated from us. Except he’s always still the same age as when he left.”
“Still a boy.”
“Nothing extraordinary ever happened to our family except that. The one thing.”
“I blame myself.”
“We were just unlucky.”
* * *
Claire had forgotten Lucy’s request the next morning when she came into her room, insisting even in Claire’s half-awake state that she had to come and look.
“It’s okay…” Of course, Claire knew of the painted walls, knew of Saint Agatha, knew the effect of all this was like being transported to another world, but now a startling new density had taken place, a crowding of impressions that took one’s breath away as if the room were alive, an organic thing, growing and developing with a logic known only to it.
The first thing to assault one on entering was a giant red heart painted against the turquoise wall. The red feral, punctured with black marks, making the whole room swim in front of Claire’s eyes, but then she realized her mistake, shook herself alert to see — what she had mistaken for a long black bar was a sword plunged diagonally into the heart.
Although the effect should have been frightening, it didn’t scare her. Instead Claire found something brave, fierce, even exhilarating, about it. Below the heart, in fine yellow lettering, was the word EZILI. Below that were symbols, painted pots and cups, next to them a palm tree reaching to the ceiling, snakes winding up its trunk. On the yellow wall, writ large, were the words HE WILL COME.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Lucy said. She walked around the room as if she were viewing an exhibition at a museum, stopping at the table in the corner. She motioned Claire over. At first glance it seemed a crowded jumble of junk. There were at least forty or fifty liquor bottles: Scotch, vodka, wine, beer, all sizes, some empty, some unopened.
“Maybe she’s into recycling.” Lucy giggled. The room had her jittery. “It’s like a folk altar. I’ve seen altars like this in Santa Fe.”
After looking more closely, they saw the arrangement was not random, was far from a cluttered jumble, was in fact laid out with great thought, and a kind of mad deliberation. At the center, among the bottles, was a crucifix, and behind it, taped to the wall, were dozens of religious postcards, some old and yellowed, some shiny new. On the table were a few burnt-out candles, and in the center of it all was the picture of Minna and Claire in Mexico, except the part with Minna had been torn off so that Claire sat grinning alone, her arm embracing empty space.
“That’s mine!” Lucy said. An old doll’s head was jammed atop one of the bottles; a corded, soft pouch was on top of another.
In a flat dish were the dregs of a noxious-looking liquid now dried brownish red, like the muddy bottom of a parched lake bed. On top of it lay a small clump of hair, more like the loose hairs pulled from a hairbrush than a clipping cut with scissors. Claire’s.
A small pink book lay open at the side. Childish writing visible in purple ink. “My diary!” Lucy said. The date fifteen years before: Josh is missing. Please bring him home. Josh is missing. Please bring him home. I promise not to lie anymore and to do my homework. Over and over the same sentences for pages.
“I thought doing this as punishment would bring him back,” Lucy said. “Why is she going through my stuff?”
Written on the wall behind the makeshift altar, because altar it was no matter how murky its intention, were the words OGOU BALANJO.
“She said she missed home,” Claire said.
“She’s not talking about Cambridge either.”
Claire felt overwhelmed and ill, yet kept looking as if some key would explain it all.
Black figures were now on the yellow walls, one a man dressed in red, holding a long chain that ended around the neck of a smaller figure, walking away, head down. In his other hand, the man threatened with a long whip.